Short Summary

A. 15 - man trade delegation from Taiwan visited a plastics factory in Abidjan on Friday (17 September) and later announced that Taiwan would like to supply the raw materials for the plastic production.

Description

A. 15 - man trade delegation from Taiwan visited a plastics factory in Abidjan on Friday (17 September) and later announced that Taiwan would like to supply the raw materials for the plastic production.

The visit was made on the same day that Ivory Coast Foreign Minister Arsene Assouan Usher said in a newspaper interview that Ivory Coast's bilateral relations with Taiwan would remain unchanged whatever the outcome of the United Nations General Assembly debates on the admission of the People's Republic of China to the U.N.

SYNOPSIS: A trade mission from Taiwan visited a plastics factory in Abidjan on Friday. The 15-member delegation, which had arrived in Ivory Coast on Thursday, was led by Mr. M. Tai Wu, Taiwan's Director of Exporting based in Kaohsiung. His mission primary objective was to study the possibilities of investing capital in the Ivory Coast, and to investigate more exchange between the two countries.

Mr. Tai Wu was interested in supplying the factory with raw materials for production. At present the plastics factory obtains materials from six European Economic Community countries. The factory in Abidjan employs 300 workers, and 85 per cent of its output is consumed by local markets. The remaining 15 per cent goes to French-speaking countries in West and Central Africa.

Mr. Tai Wu and his delegation made their tour of the factory at the same time as a newspaper interview with Ivory Coast's Foreign Minister Arsene Assouan Usher said that Ivory Coast's bilateral relations with Taiwan would remain unchanged, whatever the outcome of the United Nations General Assembly debates on the admission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations.

The Taiwan visitors were told that the factory's turnover for 1972 was expected to exceed a thousand million African francs.